Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to address you on the subject of manufacturing competitiveness in Canada, with specific reference to Alberta.
To establish my personal background, I've recently retired from a 34-year career with the steel industry. In that period I developed expertise in the application of steel throughout North America; in the automotive industry in Ontario, in mid-U.S.A.; in the mining industry coast to coast in Canada, in the United States, and internationally; and in the construction marketplace coast to coast in Canada. So I've seen a lot of manufacturing from high tech automotive through to garage entrepreneurial operations.
Since my retirement--and that was earlier this year, in June--I've maintained my involvement in the manufacturing industry by working through the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters association, where I chair a very strong Alberta board of directors. They're leaders of successful manufacturing and exporting companies, a board that advocates for many things, some of which are lean manufacturing training, the establishment of best practice regional manufacturing cluster groups, for virtual centres for manufacturing excellence, for training and manufacturing innovation and skill development, for celebrating the success of exporting, for education in business ethics, and for interprovincial trade through a program called icosmo.
My colleagues and I have taken this icosmo program to Ontario, to New Brunswick, to British Columbia, and we've scheduled to deliver the program in basically every manufacturing centre in Canada. It's designed to present to Canadian companies outside of Alberta the opportunity to get involved in this very strong economic cycle that we have in this region. The program is designed to move work out of Alberta, but to keep it in Canada where we have manufacturing companies that have open capacity and have absolutely great capability to contribute to the Alberta capital equipment growth plans related to the oil sands.
The plan is to load up Canadian capacity before the work is offered to manufacturers in other countries. This is a strategy that will increase capacity utilization of Canadian manufacturers and assist in their overall competitiveness.
Allow me to highlight some of the priorities that I see related to Canadian manufacturing competitiveness. You are familiar with the CME and the 20/20 program completed last year. It's the most extensive survey ever conducted of the Canadian manufacturing sector, and I refer you to the database. The CME program appropriately surveyed the Alberta companies and the recommendations have already been recorded in your previous sessions with Dr. Jayson Myers and others of the CME.
Overwhelming in Alberta is the need for people to support the existing and new activities that are driven by the energy sector, specifically the oil sands. The economic spin-off from this red hot Alberta economy has stretched the labour demands in every sector, from residential construction and land development right through to the retail and food service industries. The drive has resulted in labour shortages in professionals, in skilled trades, and in general labour. So solutions require all levels of government to participate.
I'm sure others will speak with greater knowledge than I have of the solutions, but it's most important to put on the table that this is a priority for the short-term focus of attention, to be able to sustain the competitiveness of this very strong economy we have in western Canada.
I want to address with you now the problems that we have with integrating our Canadian industry with the global market. Only the best participants in the world marketplace can survive. We have some of those in Canada. We have them here in Alberta, best-in-class companies, and we have the valuable resources to develop more. We have the fundamentals--we have natural resources that are needed in manufacturing, we have the energy that turns these resources into products, we have the people who have the skills of senior management in operations and international marketing, and we have access to international transportation systems to ship the products to offshore markets.
There are two problems that we have. Manufacturing companies do not know the vision of the government as it relates to export strategies for manufactured goods, and these companies carry an unnecessary burden with the infrastructure and policy needed to move the goods across Canada to port and then further on to world markets.
My experience is that a strategy of being all things to all people does not allow for a focused strategy in any business; it confuses the workforce and does not focus a company's energy and innovation. This applies as well to regions and governments. There is a need to pick the niche products and markets and then to focus energy in those very specific directions.
I think my time is pretty well up, so I'm going to pass this over, and we can talk some more during the questions.